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09 March 2013

I think I'm finally "over" WoW as a primary addiction. Every time I go back for any length of time I find myself so irritated by /trade and so frustrated by the interpersonal myopia that I am more and more easily distracted and find myself taking any excuse to be offline.

It could be the guild feeling alien and awkward... and it is likely not so much that as it is that I feel like I'm not the best fit for the guild that I like the best. I want a strong leadership style that is proactive and strong in our guidance... this is not that guild. Two of the officers weren't even at the last guild officer meeting because we thought it was going to be on one night and didn't even check to see that it was a different night this time. I am included in that.

For the first time in years I'm experiencing what it must feel like to be a casual player that is often left out of content or experiences by my more experienced and tight-knit brothers and sisters. I haven't actually been a part of this group since Decadence, Inc. was in the process of being gutted by Ominous Latin Noun.

I was less knowledgeable and this extended to my being naive of sites where I could become more knowledgeable about the things I wanted to do and didn't understand. Lexi finally took pity on me and led me through some dungeons with attention to detail as if they were raids and I took help from a really fantastic fury warrior who was on my server AND willing to help a total newb and between them I managed to build the foundation for what it would take to raid and do the things I wanted to do.

And I ran with it. I've never been an epic class raider, either... always somewhere in the smaller guild beating our head against the content level of raiding... and I've been happy there. Friends from the game repeatedly tell me that they loved my laid back attitude to learning curves, and my ability to teach on the fly for people who were excellent at what they did and just new to the content.

And now I find myself sitting in a place where the type of struggle is no longer fun to me... the challenge of the grind is defeating and the reward for the work is hollow. I love the raiding and I detest what I have to take or do to get to it.

I say this and I've just made a new friend on my server, a warlock kicking serious ass who is also friendly and willing to help. And I currently have up on my browser in separate windows WoW Heroes, Icy Veins and the Wiki about a new little island where there are fun pets and things to be gotten.

Because everyone in the guild went and got their new pets and went to find their new funness and started their grind at the Isle of Giants and I wasn't there so I wasn't included.

Now, I wasn't around for my own reasons and they have a lot to do with my original statement here... I'm burned. And really, it's not burned it's just disinterested. The way I got with Rift once the high of everyone working together was done. Ask 100 times in the guild chat if anyone would like to do anything and 1/2 of them are noncommental entirely and of the rest you'll get "in an hour" and "I already did it" and "I'm not up to doing something like that" and perhaps a single yes, if you're lucky.

One person at a time we're "remaking the guild" but not really working together as a management or leadership group to accomplish anything. We're building a casual/raiding guild (you can see any number of posts through my history about what I think of those terms together) without any real consideration to what we're doing. Optimism rules until it is guided only blindly and without concern to what it is you're undertaking.

And who cares? The old sting of knowing that I'm almost done with this thing and not ready to be done with the people is beginning to become familiar, like the hurt in my hips when I wake up and the hesitance of being overweight and wearing ill-fitting clothes to a job interview. Familiar like so many uncomfortable things in my life that I live with rather than change.

And so really all this and so many words to say the same thing I said before... once this is settled and we're all done rerouting the guild I'll take a look around myself and see if the new energy is enough to sustain me for a few more months or if I'm really done with WoW for awhile. And if I'm done with WoW will the guild allow me to share the experiences of ESO with them or would they rather that was done separately? And if they'd rather it was done separately do I pull my toons from the guild and leave them parked on Baelgun until the next time I feel like playing and then move them to the new server to join the newest member of their family?

I have no idea what shape what comes next will take, and I know what comes next... sadly.

06 March 2013

half of the practice team for ESO... that's Jack and Jules... though I haven't decided who gets what name... lol

Jack the Spellsword, a heavy armor wearing magician who relies as heavily on her spells as on her blades and takes advantage of as many different perks and abilities as she can to come out victorious. She is the warrior as likely standing on the lip of the crater slinging spells down into the fray as she is face to face with the monsters and covered in their gore.

Her partner is Jules, the unlikely healer who can hold his own and still manage to pull out the saving heal on his partners when necessary.

Or is it Jack who will heal and Jules who will be the spellsword?

WARNING SPOILIT ALERT WARNINGif you have not done the Dragonborn DLC and do not want it spoilt, please stop now.

I'm still torn on whether I'll go Breton and Orc and play Daggerfall Covenant or whether I'll go Nord and Dunmer and go the Ebonheart Pact route... either way I want a spellsword and a balanced support healer of some sort. The Dunmer presents himself as a perfect spellsword and the Nord as an unlikely support healer... and ultimately it will all depend on our choices and whether we're locked in one alliance per server since there are three factions and coordinating around the grievers* will be hard enough already.

tons of pics cause I love pics of my girls... and words in a silly story to support them, because I also love words about my girls.

This is the story of a girl named Jack... she wasn't born to that name... it just sort of happened and then got stuck when there wasn't anything that she couldn't do and the boys in town got tired of hearing about it... so they called her teasing names and made fun of her until she left town and they forgot all about the girl they called Jack-of-All-Trades.

Jack didn't know she was going to grow up to be as exceptional with spells as she is with blades or that she is the Dragonborn, or would marry a Destruction mage who would teach her everything he knew and then find her books when his own knowledge was lacking. She didn't know that one day she would be the bane of the World Eater and would stand alive in Sovngaard with the Tongues of history or that she would have to choose to hunt dragons into extinction or make another path through the world that would include another Dragonborn and many more dangerous adventures.

When she crossed the border into Skyrim she very nearly lost her head when she was taken captive by an overzealous Imperial hellbent on destroying Ulfric Stormcloak, the leader of the Stormcloak Rebellion. By the grace of an epic accident she found herself freed and on the run.

She joined the Imperial forces in Solitude after a nasty run in with some Nords in Ulfric's own home town who were hateful and horrible to all the other races and allowed a little girl to starve rather than feed her. She rose through the ranks quickly and Jack became a hero of the Empire in the war against the Stormcloaks so that by the time she left her service she had enough money to buy a home in Solitude.

She met a handsome young mage in Riften while on a mission for the Empire and she asked him to marry her and help her care for her adopted children and they were married and they lived with their girls first in Whiterun and then in Solitude once she had been able to furnish the home properly for two growing girls. Her husband taught the girls to fish and to hunt and encouraged their dreams of becoming mages or bards or hunters, depending on where they lived.

Jack worked and traveled the world to make enough gold to build a home in Falkreath so that when she retired from adventuring each girl would have a home of her own without fear of ever being uncared for again. She filled each with gems and weapons and armor of all different types as she adventured across the world, always bringing home a sweet little treat or a new dress or toy for the girls who were so happy just to have a home and family.

And Jack discovered that she had a destiny... and like every doom driven hero before her she pursued her destiny with a voracity that could not be matched... facing Alduin, The World Eater without fear...

And when the day came that she ended the World eater and had to decide which dragons to let live and which to see an end to she decided instead to let the dragons choose and sought her adventures across the sea. With her place in Sovngaard secured and the Tongues awaiting her return once her life had been well lived, Jack returned to Tamriel where she was attacked by cultists claiming she was a false Dragonborn. As a girl often mocked for her accomplishments, she was going to Solsteim to prove the guy wrong.

And Jack learned that she wasn't the only Dragonborn, she was just the only one still living and walking the land... and so she resolved to learn all that she could and make sure that the world was safe from yet another destroyer.

And she made two very bad deals in rapid succession.

A deal with the devil himself... one that brought her more power and more knowledge than she could ever hope to fully comprehend (and more books than she could ever read) and placed her on a path that could only end with the death of a Dragonborn.

And a deal with a madman... one that led her down into barrow after barrow... killing draugr...

and more draugr...

and still more draugr...

until she was finally able to defeat the madman and the ultimate evil he served.

With the heart and voice of a Dov she felt she might just be ready to take on the Dragonborn bent on world dominion.

The story btw, sucks and I know it, I'm working on an RP fanfic one that will post sometime soon... and the stories aren't why I play the game. ^^^ is why I play. LOOK AT HER! Look at the "dragon aspect" graphics... they write in the voice of a dragon and then the heart and soul of one, too... OMG! Who doesn't want to play the doom driven hero who saves the world not once or twice but as often as the opportunity arises? Who doesn't dream of being able to drive their own destiny through so many amazing adventures, each with cooler outcomes than the last?

In the Bethesda temporary ESO forums (one presumes this means they'll actually make us some eventually) we had a discussion today about whether gamers should play the same sex character as themselves or whether it matters... and why so many folks don't gender bend when they play and why so many others of us do almost intentionally... many players, particularly in Skyrim and TES games spend hours making their pixels match their real world images... there are even mods for folks running the PC version that will make you look just like yourself in-game by using a photo... and this disturbs me.

To me they cross the line into a place where fun becomes dangerous and where trying to have fun WITH them becomes even more dangerous for us both. None of my characters really looks like me. Some look like I might if I lived in their world... mostly though they look like they should to be whomever they become in the world where they live. Some cuter and smaller and some larger and without the grace of fine looks to carry them.

Some of my girls are redheads, more of them are blonde... some of my boys have blonde hair, too... the realism of the game, the beauty and the thrill of it never bypasses that place where I am the girl at the keyboard with the mouse in one hand who can, at any moment, get up and do something else. And I'm as RP as it gets, really... I think.

I just like knowing that sometimes it rains inside the game and sometimes it rains outside it... and either way I have a choice not to get wet.

Just LOOK how beautiful it is... who WOULDN'T want to play here... with her?

*grievers: folks whose sole aspiration in a game or online forum is to create problems and grief for other players or posters. they existed before MMOs and found their perfect niche in the societies created by MMO and other online worlds. they're a menace, they make almost anything you do online frustrating and manage to meet and exceed their own expectations for being loathsome little worms.

in this reference the grievers would, if allowed, race like they do in WoW where you can have characters in both factions on the same server (and in Rift where everyone can see the posts regardless of faction,) to broadcast plans of attack or torte to the other alliances on a server making coordination and success almost impossible.